Carlsberg is a leading word company, whose primary activity is the production, sale and distribution of beer and soft drinks, as well as related activities. It is a part of Carlsberg Group, which include also among others: Royal Scandinavia A/S, Combio A/S, Ejendomsaktieselskabet Tuborg and others. Total revenues of the group reach the level of 48,603 millions of DKK. The group employs 28 466 people.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has been maturing as the region prepared to join the European Union (EU). Since the beginning of transition the pattern of FDI has evolved, reflecting new business strategies pursued in anticipation of EU membership. Based on first results from a questionnaire survey conducted in 2003 in Hungary, Lithuania and Poland, we portray the recent patterns and developments in foreign investment, the motives for investment, and managers’ assessment of the local business environment. Some questions have been replicated from a study conducted in the emerging economies of Egypt, India, South Africa, and Vietnam, which allows us to benchmark FDI patterns in CEE against other emerging economies in different parts of the world. We find that find fewer changes over the period of the 1990s then we expected, but some interesting differences across the three countries in our study, and between CEE and other emerging economies.

Ownership is determined by firm specific factors and the environment. Firms change over their life-cycle. The governance cycle – here defined as changes in identity of the dominant owner and own-ership concentration - is marked by key phases including start-up, growth, and possibly a restructur-ing or exit stage. During transition the cycle reflects: privatization often with a high proportion of employee ownership like in Russia and in Slovenia; strong pressures for restructuring and owner-ship changes; limited possibility for external finance because of embryonic development of the fi-nancial system. To provide simple hypothesis tests, we use Russian enterprise data for 1995-2003 and Slovenian data covering 1998-2003. In spite of differences in institutional development, con-cerning privatization and development of corporate governance institutions, we find that govern-ance cycles are broadly similar in the two countries. Employee ownership is rapidly fading, but while change to manager and non-financial domestic outsider ownership is typical for Russia, man-ager ownership is not widespread in Slovenia. Instead change to financial outsiders in the form of Privatization Investment Funds is frequent. Foreign ownership, which is rare especially in Russia, is quite stable. The ownership diversification to employees and diversified external owners during privatization did not fit well to the low development of institutions. As expected we observe in both countries a subsequent concentration of ownership on managers, external domestic and foreign owners.
JEL-codes: G3, J5, P2, P3 - Keywords: corporate governance, life-cycle, privatization, ownership change, transition economies, Russia and Slovenia.

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Purpose of the study
This working paper aims to explain the main results of a survey as send out in the summer of 2003 by the Royal Danish Embassy in Warsaw (the Danish Embassy) and Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in cooperation. The Confederation of Danish Industries and the Dept. for International Economics and Management kindly allowed us to adopt and adapt their questionnaire that has been tested among Danish companies many times before (DI, 2003a).
The immediate target group for our paper is the group of firms that responded to the survey. We extend our gratitude to the firms that so kindly and generously have shared with us valuable information making us capable to better understand the internationalisation of Danish companies in Eastern Europe. We hope you will find the report of interest and relevance to your company.

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The Baltic countries have been through a period of 15 years with fast changes in ownership and corporate governance structures. The privatization processes have been quite different in the three countries, but in the dynamics after privatization we see an increasing level of similarity in the adjustment of the ownership structure. We have followed the changes quite closely over the years both in quantitative research and in case studies. We focus on the most important institutions for corporate governance in legislation and enforcement, bankruptcy, company law, minority shareholder protection as well as the development of the banking system and stock exchanges. The paper analyses the main trends in the development and show how all the three Baltic economies are heading toward a typical Continental European system of corporate governance based on quite concentrated blockholder ownership.

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Over the last thirty years, Vietnam evolved from "war after war" to an emerging economy with an attractive foreign investment policy and commitment to a liberalized economy. Although the GDP per capita is still considerably lower than in the Asian Tiger economies, and the institutional framework still reflects inheritances from the central plan system, Vietnam today has a vibrant economy with small businesses springing up at every street corner. Foreign investors have been flogging to Vietnam since the early 1990s, with a new peak of FDI inflow in 2004. This paper reviews the Vietnamese economy, society, culture, and policies towards foreign investment to inform those considering to invest in Vietnam, and to provide some practical advice.

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This paper gives an overview over some theory and empirical evidence on employee ownership and other forms of employee financial participation and answers the following questions: What is employee ownership and what is the relation to other forms of financial participation? Why is employee ownership widespread in some developed market economies like US and in Italy, France and Spain, while it has a quite rare occurrence in the Scandinavian countries? What are the conditions favouring and what are the barriers for employee ownership? What are the advantages and drawbacks for employee owned companies? The paper also gives a summary of the experience in the Baltics – with reference to the following three country articles – and gives finally some perspectives for the future.

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Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are expanding their global reach, carrying their products and brands to ever more remote corners of the world. They encounter business environments that vary not only from their country of origin, but also vary greatly amongst each other. Thus foreign investors have to adapt their strategies, most notably their marketing and acquisition strategies, to the local context. In this paper, we outline why globalisation drives MNEs into emerging economies, and we provide conceptual frameworks that may aid investors to adapt their strategies to emerging economy contexts. MNEs have to develop a portfolio of local and/or global brands that matches their competences with local needs. If they aim for market leadership they may pursue a multi-tier strategy, but this needs to be supported by an appropriate foundation of global and local resources. This strategy in particular requires the acquisition of complementary local resources controlled by local firms. However, acquisitions in emerging economies are inhibited by institutional obstacles and weak local firms. Thus, foreign investors may pursue staged, multiple, indirect, or Brownfield acquisitions to build their projected operation. We illustrate our proposed strategies by analysing how one multination enterprise - Carlsberg Breweries - has developed its operations in three very different emerging economies: Poland, Lithuania and Vietnam.